


First Steps

by spycaptain



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycaptain/pseuds/spycaptain
Summary: These will be your second, third, and fourth steps, won’t they? Digging your fingers into wounds that aren’t quite yours, reaching across an unfathomable distance to rend open new pains when you haven’t even figured out how to mend your own.Prompt #6 from FFXIV writing month 2019. WoL reflecting on their many selves post Shb final fight.





	First Steps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starcrossedsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/gifts).

> Gifting this to starcrossedsky, whose words planted the seed that grew into my desire to write again. I know we've never spoken, but I wanted you to know that while this wasn't specifically written for you, it exists because of you and how much your words inspired me to open myself up to being creative again.

_ “Remember us.” _

You promised him you would, but there are other things that keep your focus for the moment. 

Seven other very familiar things. 

It’s the first thing you do upon your return to the Crystarium. You could sleep, you could celebrate with the rest of the city, but instead you go to your room and settle in for a long night. You have things to write and faces to remember. 

The first one you noticed was a white mage. Funny, you think, in another world you are just the same. They seemed young -- careless in a way you once were -- and you will never forget the look on their face when you pulled them out from Hades’ grasp. Only the young find ways to be shocked that they too can die. It’s a familiar, stupid feeling. 

Even though you know the truth, hindsight leaves no room for doubt: that one was definitely part of you. 

They all were -- are, in times and tenses you can’t even begin to understand -- a part of you. Each one of the seven who stood beside you in your fight against Hades was another piece to your story, a chance at the kind of completion Emet-Selch claimed you could never attain. He made a lot of claims against you, you realize, in a thought separate from the ones you scribble across the page. 

How many of them were true, and how many of them were his truth, a story twisted by the perspective of a man who sacrificed everything only to walk away with a false gods blessing? He offered you truths and you’d like to think he gave them. There’s no crime you can charge him with when it comes to that, it’s not his fault that the only thing his truths gave you were more questions.

But he’s dead now, and in that sense unimportant. His story was just the first step, and you are now moving forward. He’s not like the ones you are trying to remember. 

There was a dragoon. A tall, angry woman, with wild hair and eyes that watched Hades like a bird chasing familiar prey. She was older, with scars and skin that has seen too many elements to age beautifully, and to you she is a puzzle with missing pieces. 

She is a mix of futures you don’t know how you could survive. 

You’ve learned through the years how the battles you fight can feel like a mad, drawn out dance. In the heat of the moment, when your enemy is familiar, the rhythm you fall into is almost cathartic. Blow for blow you seem to be evenly matched. You do not take anything from him that he does not take from you in kind. 

But in the long -- in the days, weeks, months, and years that your story spans -- you are never the victor. Something is always stolen. Something irreplaceable is always snatched from your grasp. 

You wonder if there was something she managed to take from him. What it was he managed to take from her. Was it her leg, the one you notice too late works like one of Cid’s machinations? It was a thing of genius, a lost part of herself that she weaponized and used in ways you never could have imagined. 

_ Screaming, and a face you’d know anywhere. It’s panicked as it picks you up, hauls you up from the dirt gracelessly, and begins to drag you away from the carnage. _

_ You watch your leg, crushed and twisted, black with dirt and magic you’ve never seen before, as it brushes along earth and rock. You feel nothing. _

_ Just as you think this, things change. The battle turns. There’s a flash of white, a rush of fire, and a smoke so thick it turns the world around you black. _

Your grip on the pen loosens, and your writing stops.

There was something more they took from her, then. You can feel it in your chest, in a familiar hole that reopens at the fear of another great loss. These will be your second, third, and fourth steps, won’t they? Digging your fingers into wounds that aren’t quite yours, reaching across an unfathomable distance to rend open new pains when you haven’t even figured out how to mend your own. 

This is the inherent danger of the first, eager step. You won’t be able to control the pace of the ones that follow, nor will you be able to control the cut of the path they weave. 

With that thought, you sit down your pen, and raise yourself up from your seat. There are victories for you to celebrate tonight, and you suddenly find yourself in desperate need of them.


End file.
